21 January, 2012

The War Of The Scales

21 January 2011
489

R. Linda:

Well, well, well, the old Dragon has decided to drop a few pounds, yes she has. Who would think such a thing as a DIET would enter her Dragon mind? The woman likes to cook! When she's here she boots Tonya out of her own kitchen (well, me Mam does too and I do hope it be no reflection on the wife's cooking :::cough:::), so this bit of news and what follows is both surprising and not so surprising.

Seems when we were down to Dragon's abode for New Year, everyone was quite taken with Tonya's weight loss from (get this: it's been almost 3 years since she had pregnant weight to rid herself of) Tonya's figure being back to pre-baby. Well duh, how many years has it been? Poor Tonya, none of her siblings except her sister, had seen her in almost three years, so for them . . . well they just didn't know any better. Though to look over and see LaGuardia romping about, walking, talking, cursing and throwing things, anyone with half a brain would know he was well beyond the "infant stage." But we are talking the Abdullah clan. Not the brightest bulbs or maybe I should be fair and say they are (most of them) brilliant in education, but lack common sense, like in this case.

Tonya was hounded with "How did you drop all that weight?" Which made Tonya think she must have looked like an elephant, which was not true. In her second pregnancy, she was very careful and only gained 18 lbs. which she lost all of it within eight months and it's been a few years and she's managed to keep it off. She went back onto Jenny Craig, zipped off the weight and has been on people food (as I like to call it) ever since. But we are dealing with the in-fighting, cattiness, and backstabbing siblings who do so well when they are jealous of each other. So while all this was going on, the Dragon decided Tonya looked very well indeed and well, maybe if it was really that easy on Jenny C she might give it a go and join Tonya in the svelte ranks of fit female bodies. OK.

She hinted at this in a conversation with Tonya but never said with any certainty she was going to pursue it. Well, we probably would not have known anything about this, but for a problem the Dragon ran into that she decided to consult (more like complain to) Tonya (the professional dieter she erroneously referred to her as).

The problem was this: Because she did not want Tonya to think she was competing with her, she didn't go on Jenny Craig, she opted for Nutrisystems instead. She said she liked Janet Jackson over Valerie Bertinelli (of course she would) and so started the diet online. The first thing she had to do was weigh in, and therein lies the problem. The scale, the only scale in the house (with the exception of an old dinosaur), the children of her son had pretty much trashed. They had been weighing the dog, the cat, and even the parakeet, it was awful, but they managed to screw the digital reading thingie up (but not as much as they did the parakeet).

So when Dragon stepped on the scale she found she weighed a whopping 250 lbs. She nearly had heart failure, AND she had no clue at the time the scale had been messed with (only the husband knew and well, you guessed it, he failed to inform her of the problem). So once she caught her breath and her breathing returned to normal she stepped on again, and THIS TIME she weighed in at a BIG 275 lbs. Yup, I don't have to describe the reaction to THAT, you can imagine it all on your own. A hint, there was a lot of screaming and then she picked up the scale and threw it. Yes, she did. That will teach that scale!

"I am NOT THAT BIG," she shouted at the scale before kicking it, "you x)*&^xx£@! worthless thing!"

SIGH

The husband came running thinking someone was in the water closet attacking his wife! Come to find out what she was hissy fitting over and he reluctantly told her about the scale to which she WAS NOT PLEASED with the man. In a huff, she went off to find the "other" scale, the old one. You would think she wouldn't do that, after the run-in with the other scale, but no, no, we are talking Dragon and yes she did.

Heaving a sigh she got it out and stepped on it. I have to pause here for obvious reasons. Give me a moment.

OK then. Laughter over. When she stepped on THAT scale she weighed 415 lbs. Yes, she did. I have to laugh again, I'm sorry but really. So you can imagine what frame of mind THAT put her in.

She had to go register her weight before she could set up her food plan on Nutrisystem, so being very upset and taking a GUESS, she used the weight she was a year ago. Now, let me tell you something, after a few cruise ship trips where the grazing be encouraged, the daily dinners at Cape May's finest restaurants, and that big New Year's bash of food, if she was in her right mind, she would have realised that last year's weight wouldn't cut it. But she was in a tizzy and just wanted to get started. She ordered her plan and her food and then went in search of the husband, whose fault it was she didn't know her TRUE weight (in her mind that is), to fetch him to go buy a new scale. Sounds good doesn't it? Sounds like the very solution to the problem, but wait, it gets better, I mean worse.

BED, BATH, AND BEYONDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!! Uh-huh. That was the place to buy a new scale. Well, there were a dozen different scales, all kinds, ones that tell you just your weight, others that give you weight and body mass, others that throw in water weight, heart rate, and the TIME, if you are so inclined. Well, Dragon looked and looked and the husband was getting antsy (the Giants were to play the Packers and he wanted to be home to see it), so he said, "How about THIS one?"

This one looked like the one she just beat the crap out of, so no that wouldn't do. She liked the Weight Watchers at $65.00. Gave you all the bells and whistles.

"You don't need that, you just need the weight," Abdullah senior said and pointed to another one that only gave weight at a mere $29.99.

Being pretty trounced and down after the scale readings and feeling very sorry for herself, she decided HE wanted her to have the cheap scale, so she'd get it and as a result, make his life miserable. So to the checkout, they went. Yes indeed.

Halfway home she says to him with a sigh that she'll have to figure out for herself the body mass numbers and water weight. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

"Don't they do that when you punch in your weight on the website?" He bravely asks.

Heaving another great sigh, she said, "Just the body mass, I'll have to figure out online somewhere how you do the rest of it." SIGH.

So, the man, not being stupid and wise to the Dragon's ways, begins to turn around to go BACK and return the scale for another one, because he gets it, SHE is going to blame him somehow if this weight thing doesn't work! BUT ladies and gents, she is too angry to go back there for the one she originally wanted, no, no, it was going to give her something to do besides focus on weight loss by harassing her husband. Yes, so much more fun than knowing all that other stuff don't you think?

Once home she ignored the scale and went about her day. Meanwhile, Abdullah senior took himself to the study to watch the game and he had some tools with him, to make an attempt at half-time to fix the scale the kids had ruined. Well, he managed it! Yes, he did, it might be a pound or two off but close enough. He'll rue the day he ever "fixed" that scale he would and HAS!

He made the mistake of telling Dragon what he had done, and THAT scale had body mass calculations on it. YEA!

Well, the next morning she comes into the kitchen looking pretty angry. He reluctantly asked her what was wrong and she told him she hated the new scale you had to beat the hell out of it to get it to operate and that just didn't happen. Yes, it is one of those glass scales with the "tap here" to activate and well . . .when one hasn't had her coffee and is impatient in the mornings . . .

The diet food arrived within days and the diet was officially on.

So she shuffled off to try the newly fixed scale. Well, that morning she was horrified to find she didn't weigh what she had put down. So she fixed it, up ten pounds from the guess on the Nutrisystem website, and she could live with that, but to her horror, the correct weight did not register as original, it registered as NOW making it look like the Dragon Lady had packed on ten pounds while waiting for the Nutrisystem food to arrive. Therefore, she had a weight GAIN of ten pounds! Meanwhile, the husband was trying to figure out why the new scale wouldn't work, but he did get it working, though it took him another day because he couldn't find the operating manual (she had thrown it in the trash can the week before and it was gone). So she weighed herself with the fixed scale and found she was down five pounds! How wonderful was this? She punched that in the Nutrisystem program cutting in half her ten pounds to a five-pound gain.

But that night she was suspicious of such a fast weight loss or gain, however you want to look at this. She tossed and turned and the very next morning she got the new scale and she was way up from the last reading to an eight-pound gain! But wait, this was not right, it just could not be. She went to the fixed scale and that had her down, but only two pounds away from the eight-pound gain. Hum. Reluctantly she punched in the gain which had her up eight pounds, two away from the starting weight but eight away from the original guess weight! Then she remembered a very ancient scale that still worked but needed batteries. She dragged it out, got the batteries in, and stepped on it. She weighed more on it than the other two! Crazed she called Tonya, telling her that the Nutrisystem people would probably want some kind of explanation from her as to why her weight was yoyo-ing up and down, and all over the place. She truly had no idea what she weighed or what ball field her weight might be in the poor dear.

Tonya wanted no part in a war between mother and father and did try to encourage her mother by telling her to drop in at her doctor's office and get weighed there, but Dragon said if she did and it turned out she was a thousand pounds they'd put her on their own diet and she paid all this money, etc, etc., etc. Such a sad story, huh?

The morning after her phone call to Tonya, she got on the new scale and she was down two pounds? How was that possible? So she went to the fixed scale and it said she was up five pounds. The very ancient of scales said she was down ten pounds. Don't hallelujah just quite yet. Confused and starting to lose her temper she railed on the husband for a good two hours before he caved and took her back to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and sprung the money for the Weight Watchers scale. Oh yes he did, the man wanted peace in his life he did and no cost was too great. He was determined to watch a football game in quiet he was.

Now she had five scales! What to do? In true Dragon form, she started on the oldest first and worked her way down. Well, the one she liked the best was the Weight Watchers scale BECAUSE that one said she weighed less than the other four. But wait! She was still not down to the weight she had guessed at, so to enter the Weight Watchers weight (in Dragon's mind) would certainly get the Nutrisystem's people in a tizzy. So she took the other new and cheaper scale weight which was a pound off the Weight Watchers and entered THAT. OMG, the woman!

So feeling happy she is now discarding all the scales but the Weight Watchers because the next time it won't look too suspicious a reading. Oi, oi, oi! I be so thankful the woman doesn't live with us.

I know you must be confused so let me straighten out just where the Dragon's weight is. Her ten-pound GUESS was wrong. She was really up ten pounds or near that. So when she entered her more true starting weight (ten pounds up from the first guess), Nutrisystem had it as she GAINED ten pounds. She had lost the first week on the diet 5 pounds in all reality. That put her at a five-pound weight gain because the Nutrisystem's people (maybe because of all this fooling around did NOT fix the weight from her original guess to what her weight most likely was), even though she wrote them and asked them to correct it. I have to laugh. Nothing goes right in the world of the Dragon. But the good news is in actuality she really lost five pounds!

So as of today, she has a two-pound gain (which is really a 7 pound loss) but really is only a 1 pound gain according to the newest scale and an 8 pound loss and Nutrisystems doesn't know this because she's too embarrassed to put it down that they would think she is a nutter? Oh, what would EVER give them that idea?

Uh-huh, what can I say?

Gabe
Copyright © 2012 All rights reserved

4 comments:

Fionnula said...

LOL with all the new scales it must be hard to choose the right one! i have one of those glass scales and if you flip on the user button the scale comes right to life. tell her to try that it might help so she doesn't beat it to death

Skye said...

YOU do have the situations! Funny though.

Dew said...

Those "tap here" scales can drive you crazy. I know because I have one. You tap where it says and nothing happens. Before you know it you're doing a dance with the tap tap tap, first with one foot,then you have a go with the other and then the hands get involved. With any luck you're losing a pound as a result. The only way I get it to work is to drop it on the floor and well, god knows if the reading is correct after doing that a few times LOL.

Gabriel O'Sullivan said...

Well, she does a tap dance on the scale at the weight she's at, she may break the glass and then she'd be full of shards and we'd never hear the end of it. I be thinking that's next.